Swamped

"Just one more, I think. Where'd you go hunting before you started checking the desert?"

You're sure the answer will just be nonsense, but you might as well keep up the game. If only to make them worry about how much they're fooling you.

"All over. Grew up in a tiny town, middle of nowhere, got out of there as soon as I could. Place was called Slali or something like that. It was boring as hell. Got my start when I was ambushed by bandits, fought back, and managed to capture the leader. That was a stroke of luck, but the bounty was good enough to keep me and my horse fed, so I just kept going. Much more interesting than any other work I could do. Wasn't really heading for anywhere in particular, though. Usually I stopped in a big city, grabbed a few bounties, and moved on."

Well. They got a little too clever in picking obscure towns there. Sure, not many people have heard of Slali, but you have. Ash griped about the place all the time when you were couriers. Enough that you remember how it's pronounced.

And he also told you they don't speak Common in that town. Instead they speak some weird language that you barely even remember the name of. Teltian or something. Even if they really don't remember the name of their hometown, you'd think they'd mention something about the language if they'd really lived there.

"All right, that'll do for now," you say. You turn to the Protectors. "Would you two mind watching this troublemaker while we talk?"

The Protectors say nothing, but they do walk over and start to watch. Rider leads you a few feet away.

"I don't think that's a real bounty hunter," Rider says.

"Me neither. Ember suggested we just have the Protectors hand them over to the Church of Reth. I'm kind of thinking maybe we should."

Rider holds his hand to his chin in thought.

"That does seem like the simplest option. But no, I don't think that would be a good idea."

"Why not?" you ask.

"Because our fake bounty hunter said something that greatly concerned me during my questioning."

They're already working for the church--or at least, someone in it.

Someone high up.

"There is a mole or traitor among them. But we don't know who."

"I asked the hunter if they'd run into trouble with the Church of Reth before, since that seemed to be such a concern," Rider continues. "They tried to pass it off as a mere issue of clashing religions, but in one of their anecdotes, they mentioned being present at a ceremony that isn't open to the public."

"Maybe they got the name wrong," you say.

"They never gave me the name, but the details they did give me point to it. It's an annual celebration for a bountiful harvest in a year that was expected to be thin. There are local versions of it in almost every grebling colony, but only the one at the temple rings a harvest bell. Which they specifically mentioned."

"So what you're saying is..."

"I suspect our hunter has a contact at the Temple of Reth. Likely a high-placed one."

"So they'd escape," you say. "Yeah, that's a risk. So what should we do instead?"

"I've been thinking about that, and I've concluded it's best to save it for after our little trip. The only problem is, I'm not sure if Ember and the Protectors will be enough to dissuade them from trying something."

"So what are you going to..."

Before you can finish, Rider steps away and makes some bird noises that make you feel embarrassed about your recent attempts at them. The large bird comes ambling over soon after.

Rider simply points to the hunter, and the bird sits down on them.

"Ouch! The hells is this?" they cry.

"Another guard. We'll try not to leave you with him for too long," Rider says. He turns to you. "We should leave soon. Are there any preparations we should make first?"

Nope, let's get cracking!

"Don't think so," you say after some thought. "We're as ready as we're going to be for this. My biggest worry is that our guest manages to escape despite the bird, the wizard, and the two greblings, but I think we're about as ready for that as we can be."

"Good to hear it," Ember says, walking up suddenly. "Get yourselves in those crates, and be ready for anything once they arrive."

You climb in, and Ember shuts the crate above you. You close your eyes and cover your ears. Before long, you can't see anything, and can't hear anything besides the water around you. You assume Rider's doing the same.

A few minutes in, you think you hear a faint sound. Maybe a sign you're in transit. You try not to focus on what it is, and start splashing a little so the water will be louder.

The water is pushing you around, but you just let yourself drift. If you think too much about where you're moving, you'll get disoriented. You try to focus entirely on the sounds of the water.

Despite your efforts, you feel a little bit dizzy. But just as you're worried that you might lose focus entirely, you hear a loud sound that's very clearly wood landing on wood, and you feel the water moving around more and more.

You're here. You open your eyes at last. You swim towards the edge and push against the edge of the crate to lift it up.

You look around. This looks like some kind of ship, but you don't see anyone around. Worse, you don't see Rider's crate.

What now?

Well, best not to wait around for someone to find you! Get moving! ...Stealthily...

You're alone. It's worrying that Rider isn't here, but it also means there aren't any hostiles.

You have no idea how long that's going to remain true. You need to find a safe place to hide.

You seem to be in a very small room, though. The crate's taking up nearly half the floorspace. And there's only one exit you can see...

Wait, no. There's a hatch in the ceiling. No sign of a ladder or anything leading up to it, though. You might be able to reach it if you stand on the crate, but you'd surely make a lot of noise in the process and there's no guarantee it leads anywhere.

The door it is, then. You open it carefully, and wait a moment to listen for footsteps or voices.

Nothing. If anyone's here, they aren't just down the hall. Good enough for you.

You close the door behind you and look around. This is indeed a hall, but it's an unusually narrow one. And there's no door on the opposite wall.

So you've pretty much got a simple choice right now - left or right. Not that you know what's in either direction.

What matters for now is not being spotted. So if you had a good way to tell which side you're less likely to find people on, that would help a lot.

Take off your mask and smell the air. Is there a draft coming from one direction or the other?

Left.

You take off your breather mask. You don't know what the air is going to tell you, but it's one of your few sources of information. Best not to limit it.

Hmm. Feels like there's a bit of a draft coming in from the left.

Well, if there was anyone around, they'd probably look into that. Which means that side is less likely to be occupied - or if it is, whoever's there is probably going to have their attention elsewhere. You don't have much to go on, so you may as well run with that and hope it works out.

The corridor soon splits, only this time there's a door nearby. It's open just a crack, and it seems to be where the draft is coming from.

If anyone else is nearby, they'll be taking a look in this room. Unless you shut the door.

Well, best to see what's in there and you can make your decision afterwards. You get close to the door and try to peek inside without opening it further.

What do you see?

A shadow! An intruder!

You think you see someone's shadow. On the one hand, that's bad for staying out of the way; on the other hand, if you can sneak up on whoever it is, you might be able to subdue them and get some answers about where in the hells you are.

But then you hear footsteps. And they're not coming from inside the door. You could run the other way...

Hold on. The shadow moved away suddenly. Maybe they're as much an intruder as you are. And if that's so, then maybe whoever's coming will find them first.

You carefully open the door and slip in, then return it to its ajar position as best you can. The draft feels stronger. The room itself is filled with shelves, with a number of identical boxes on most of them. You don't feel you have time to check the boxes themselves, but this is clearly a storeroom of some kind.

Which provides plenty of places to hide. You duck down and slip behind one of the lower shelves. You're tempted to get under it, but you don't think there's quite enough space. For now, it's best to stay quiet, wait, and observe.

You hear the door opening. That must be whoever's come looking here. You can't quite see them yet, though.

You can really hear them walking, though. If they get close, you'll have plenty of warning.

And then you hear another set. Faster. So maybe you were right about there being another intruder.

Which means you have a choice. You can sit here quietly, and hope they assume they're done when they catch whoever else is in here. Or, you can take the risk of getting closer in order to get more information about just who you're dealing with.

What should you do?

Distraction. Then ambush.

See if you can maneuver your way between the footsteps and the door as you work your way closer for a glimpse. That way you can either make a quick getaway or stop them from fleeing, depending on the necessity of the situation.

You need to know more. That said, you should still play it safe, if only by giving yourself time to run. So you carefully move closer to the entrance, then try to follow the footsteps. You might need to stop whoever's here from leaving and warning others.

What you see is a muscular woman towering over someone dressed in armor - but in a way that suggests they don't know much about wearing it properly.

"I already told you, if you don't want to get into trouble, you do what I say," the woman growls. "If you hadn't interfered, we wouldn't be here in the first place. You're lucky I gave you any chance at all."

The armored person doesn't seem to respond at all. They seem very frightened.

"Now let's get you back to work. We don't need anything in here."

You slip back behind the nearest shelf. You don't know what's going on, but they don't seem to have noticed your presence yet.

The woman leaves the room, dragging the other person out with her. Neither of them notices you.

Well. You should be fine at least until somebody notices the crate you arrived in. She said they don't need anything in this room, so it should be safe to hide in for a bit.

Still drafty, though. You could look into that. Or perhaps you could see what's in these boxes. Then again, maybe it's better not to stay here and instead look elsewhere for some clue as to what's going on. Maybe even follow that woman from a safe distance.

What should you do?

Source of the draft!

You find you can't help but worry about what the draft might mean. You opt to look into that first, in case it's something important.

You follow it as best as you can, and find another door. This one's firmly locked, but you can definitely feel cold air coming through it. Is it supposed to be like this?

Hmm. There's a long length of wood leaning against the wall. It looks to be about as wide as the door. Reminds you of a gangplank.

So maybe you're on some kind of ship and this door's for loading and unloading? Except it's a ship that doesn't go on water, if it's letting this much air in.

Well, Ember did say the destination was high in the air. So that makes a bit of sense, other than the part where the ship is presumably flying. You're still having trouble getting your head around that.

You don't think you're going to find out much more unless you unlock the door, and if this really is a flying ship of some kind, that might be dangerous. So you turn your attention to the closest matter at hand: the boxes.

They're tied shut, so if you simply opened one, it might be noticed. Then again, it might not; that strangely silent person in the armor might get blamed for it. Even better, they might have opened one before being found. You opt to start by looking roughly where they were caught.

You soon find yourself in luck. One of the boxes has had the string removed, though it hasn't been opened yet. This should be a safe way to satisfy your curiosity.

What's in there?

Round metal coin...? It's not entirely clear what they are, but they are awfully lighter than they look.

At first glance, it looks like the box is filled with coins, made of iron or something instead of gold. But they're slightly larger than most coins you've seen.

Picking one up, it also seems a good deal lighter than it looks. Maybe it's hollow? You try tapping on it, but you can't really tell.

You're half-inclined to grab it in case you can have someone look at it later, but you also can't be sure it's not some kind of magical trap. Then again, if it is there's an awful lot of them in this box.

Well. That's probably all you're going to find, unless you take a chance on opening another box. So you need to think about your next move.

You remember a bit about what Ember told you. He said that the sphere didn't do the actual transporting, something on the other side did. And now you're on the other side, so it might be good to look for that something. Not that you'd understand how it works, but it's probably useful to know where it is.

Of course, your main goal is finding Marshall and Captain Long. Then you've got to figure out how to get back. Apparently Ember can bring you back, but you didn't really get any details on if he can bring them back with you... you probably should have.

And you haven't seen any sign of Rider, which is worrying. If you're lucky, he just got sent to another part of this flying ship or whatever it is. If you're not so lucky, he might be lost in whatever place you passed through to get here. You should try to meet up with him if he's here.

Then there's just generally figuring out what the people here are up to. Especially since Ash may somehow be involved.

So. Those are the big things. And you have few thoughts on how to do any of them. Where should you even begin?

Need to do more recon if you want to find Long, Marshall, or Rider. Return to the hallway and continue along the corridor, stealthily.

But first, scratch a symbol into the wood near the locked door to let Rider know you're here and safe, should he pass this way.

Well. It doesn't take long to settle on finding people as your top priority. The more people you have with you, the better your chances if you get caught. Plus, who knows what kind of trouble they might be in right now.

But whatever you do, you'll need to know more about how this place is laid out. And if Rider's here... well, it would be good if you could leave some sort of signal to let him know you made it. At least one of you would be less worried that way.

You head out, opting to leave the discs where they are for the moment. Then you take your mudpike and just give the wall a few quick scratches. You opt to make the shape of the simple "Acknowledged" hand signal, with lines in place of fingers. Rider should be able to figure out that it's from you, no need to go into specifics.

With that settled, you put away your pike and sneak down the hall. You can see shadows to your right, which look vaguely like the people you just saw, so you opt to go left for now. Better to play it safe and avoid a confrontation.

The hall is surprisingly empty. For the moment, you opt to keep going straight for as long as you can. You pass by one door, which seems to be a very small kitchen. After that the hall starts to curve, and meets with another passage at the end of the curve. If you're on a ship, then this would likely be near the front of it. No doors in sight, though.

That's odd. Why have this passage at all if it doesn't lead anywhere? Perhaps there's something here you're overlooking.

Those aren't walls... they're windows!

You look around again, and you spot something odd about the wall. There's a small gap between two metal lines.

You get closer, and you think you can see something in the gap. Something... blue?

You hold onto one of the metal lines to lean in for a better look, but then you feel it start to move.

The walls here roll back. There are windows beyond them. This must be for observation.

And it confirms that you are, in fact, in the sky. Clouds flow past outside - with surprising speed. So this place is moving, then?

You pull the metal line back. No sense making it obvious you were here, so it's time to think about your next move.

You don't have any paper ready, so you try your best to think about the distance you've traveled in your head. If this place is about the same size as an oceangoing ship, then the door to the storage room was probably about halfway to the end of it.

In all that time, you've only seen three rooms, but you didn't explore any halls. Still, you glanced at them long enough to get a sense of their size. Which means you have a rough idea of where other rooms could even fit.

Your mental map is far from perfect, but it's better than nothing. So where do you plan to go from here?

Time to go... Up?